


nightmares

by heatwves



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Relationship Study, Slow Burn, im so soft for these two, this is soft actually, this was written with a lot of love, working through trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 03:42:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heatwves/pseuds/heatwves
Summary: "When Bucky's done talking, having lost track of time, Sam is half asleep on the bed, and Bucky doesn't try to get him to leave, and Sam doesn't try to leave.That night, he doesn't have dreams."A study in how Bucky and Sam's relationship evolves, as they work through their nightmares together.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 19
Kudos: 144





	nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> this is how i'd like falcon and the winter soldier to go, but you know, it's marvel we're talking about so. i just had to write it myself.

i.

_ “Bucky”. _

His skin is clammy, his hair sticking to his face and he can’t breathe. He feels like he’s been screaming for hours, and maybe he has. He always wakes up disoriented nowadays, waking up in different locations every other week, so he’s gotten into the habit of sleeping with his blinds as open as possible, just to at least have some light enter the room, to help him ground himself, for moments like this. 

He looks around the room frantically, trying to find some light to guide his eyes, just so he can feel  _ at least  _ a bit safer. He takes a deep breath through his mouth ( _ dry _ , he notices. Had he really been screaming?).

He feels a hand on his shoulder and jumps, stress jolting through his body again. He hitches his breath. 

“ _ Bucky? _ ” he hears the voice again - okay, so, it was actually someone talking to him, not just a dream. He blurts out “Steve” because it's always the first name that comes to his mind, before he can remember where he is and who’s most likely to be talking to him.

“No, sorry.” He turns to see Sam frowning next to his bed, specks of outdoor light on his face, lighting up his silhouette. Shirtless, and looking worried (Bucky’s brain would only register this later, as he tries to fall back asleep, and reaches no conclusion), and only then does Bucky realize how  _ cold _ he feels, and how damp his sheets are. His shirt is clinging onto his chest and he tries to peel it away but it just makes him colder.

“Bucky-”. Right, Sam, that’s what’s in front of him, and that’s what he can hear right now. He has to do a mental checklist - he can see Sam, and the light coming in from the window, and behind Sam he can see his bedroom door open; he can feel his hands on the bed, even if they feel slippery, and mostly he feels cold; he can smell - sweat? His, probably; and he can taste absolutely nothing, and realizes he desperately needs water. Back to Sam -

“Sam.” Good, solid start to the conversation. Nothing to see here, Sam, he thinks, just an old man and his nightmares.

Sam hesitates. “You were screaming,” Sam says, sounding unsure. Oh, Bucky thinks, so I really was yelling. But then,  _ Oh. How much did he hear? _

“Something in russian, I think,” Sam is quick to add, and Bucky’s sure the relief is visible on his face. Last thing he needs is having  _ Sam _ know what he dreams abouts. 

“Sorry about that,” Bucky replies, because what else is he to say? He’s not going to ask whether it woke Sam up because it obviously did. “I’ll try to… not do that again.”

Sam looks hesitant again, and Bucky already knows what he’s going to ask before Sam asks it because it’s what everyone always asks. Steve, always. Shuri, when he once woke up in Wakanda surrounded by guards because they thought he was being attacked. Neighbours, sometimes, back when he was on the run and he screamed so loudly the neighbours came running.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

No. He doesn’t. He wishes he didn’t even have to dream about it. Having lived through it - wasn’t it enough? 

“No,” he says, and maybe it comes out more aggressive than he wanted because Sam tenses up, like he’s expecting Bucky to cuss him out.

“Okay,” Sam replies, and even with the low light Bucky is sure he can see him mouthing “sorry”.

They stare at each other for a beat, Bucky’s breath slowly, slowly, coming back to normal. Sam seems to be preparing a whole speech in his head, but then simply says, “I’m here if you need me,” and it sounds genuine. He’s so used to the dynamic they’ve got going on, calling each other “idiot” or “co-worker” or “colleague” and poking fun at each other, that sometimes Bucky forgets that Sam’s job used to be helping people like himself. That, actually, Sam understands him, maybe not in the way Steve did, but he knows what it’s like to go through hell (a different hell, but hell nonetheless). But those are thoughts for later, because he’s not in the right mindset to deal with them right now.

Bucky nods in acknowledgment, and Sam nods back and backs out of the room. He stops at the door. “In my experience, a shower helps,” he says, and leaves before Bucky can reply.

ii.

Sam fell asleep on the sofa. It had been a long day with some not so nice injuries thrown in along the way, and when they finished having dinner (dinner! For once! Like regular people! Who would’ve thought!) Sam said “I’m just going to lie down for two seconds” and fell asleep almost as soon as he laid down on the old, scratchy, half ripped-up sofa. 

This house wasn’t very nice, Bucky had noticed. Not that he needed a hotel with room service in every mission, that would be a terrible idea, but sometimes he wondered where S.W.O.R.D found these hideouts. Did they own them? Or were they just AirBnB’ing them as they went along? He never asked. 

He entertained himself with thoughts of how those kinds of meetings went while cleaning the dishes.

(“Sir, we found this house in the middle of the woods, it looks like someone was murdered there and it’s probably haunted, but it’s really cheap”, he imagined a tech-savvy intern with two phones and an earpiece saying, and the boss would reply “Book it,” in a stern voice, as if anything in that conversation made any sense. Shuri once tried to explain to him the whole “sleeping in a stranger's house through the internet” thing, but he still wasn’t sure how it worked) 

But a glance at Sam had him quickly skipping over to the sofa and laying his jacket on top of Sam, because he couldn’t stand the sight of anyone napping without a blanket on top of them, and because they didn’t have any blankets, so Bucky’s jacket would have to do. 

He took a mental note to carry Sam to his bed once he was done with the dishes, because he knew that 9pm naps only ended at 4am, and spending most of your night on the couch is just painful. And yeah, Sam would make fun of him in the morning for caring, or whatever, but he’d be thankful, and probably cook him breakfast as an unspoken thank you. That’s how it worked between them.

He’s almost done cleaning the dishes - they look yellow from the use, and the wood in the cabinets is an unnatural dark, and the walls are all greyed out from what seems like years of indoor smoking, and he’s once again wondering where they find these places - when he hears Sam say a soft “no”. At first, Bucky thinks Sam has woken up and is talking to him, so he asks “Huh?” as he turns around, but Sam is still asleep. Bucky stops, dish in his hand middair, as he tries to make out what Sam is saying. 

“No,” Sam mumbles again, and his face is scrunched. It takes a while for Bucky to understand the next word Sam says, mostly slurred. “Riley.”

And he might not know Sam’s whole life, but he knows enough about Sam to know that “No” followed by “Riley” probably doesn’t mean happy memories. 

Sam starts getting agitated, his voice getting louder, and Bucky puts down the dish and moves toward the sofa, grabs Sam’s hands so he won’t punch him when he wakes up, and as softly as possible says “Sam”.

It takes a couple of tries, but Sam finally wakes up, tears on the corners of his eyes. He glances at Bucky and then looks away. 

“Breathe,” Bucky says, letting go of Sam’s hands, and kneeling next to the sofa. “Breathe.”

Sam doesn’t look at him, just stares at the ground, but Bucky stays next to him the whole time in silence, until Sam wants to speak.

“Haven’t dreamt about that in a while,” Sam says, sighing, his shoulders slumping forward, lazily turning to face Bucky. “You know? The kind of nightmare that you thought was gone? And then it just comes back to haunt you?”

Bucky nods, doesn’t say anything. 

“I don’t think I’m going to sleep any time soon,” Sam says, giving Bucky a faint smile that translates to “let’s not talk about this yet”.

Bucky shrugs. “I’ll keep you company,” he says, “it’s not like I’ve got anything to do.”

iii.

He can't sleep, so he sits on the floor, in the balcony (this time it's an apartment, right in the middle of a city. Management says it's safe, but Bucky's only worried about how safe the civilians living in this building are, and they're not safe if they're close to him), taking in the cold night air, watching as the city lights flicker. He blames the jet lag, but really, he just hates trying to fall asleep.

You can't see stars here, so there's no constellations he can busy himself with studying, only cars, and dogs barking, and drunk people talking too loudly. 

He doesn't like to admit that he envies them, but no one's here to judge him while he stares intently at the people walking by, laughing, holding hands, talking, a little too happy, a little too giddy. He used to have that, he could have had that if only - he shakes his head, as if that somehow makes the thoughts go away. 

Steve used to say "it's a miracle that we get to witness this, Buck. Look at this? Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it everything we ever dreamt of?". But Steve got his happy ending, didn't he? Went right back to the past, lived a whole goddamn life without him, and left him here. So much for the miracle.

He watches the cars driving by, imagines what kind of lives those people lead. Are they happy? Do they have nightmares? Do they go entire nights without sleep? Do they have loved ones? Because the closest thing he's got is Sam. That's it, that's his family now. And he's not complaining, Sam is - well, they're warming up to each other, and whenever Bucky gives it a bit more thought he realizes that they have more in common than they like to admit. But Sam is just one person, and Bucky used to have a whole family.

"Can't sleep?" he hears Sam behind him ask, think of the devil. He turns around and watches as Sam sits next to him, keeping a polite distance. "Mind if I join?"

"You already have," Bucky replies dryly, motioning with his head towards where Sam is sitting, and then immediately regrets his tone.

"I can leave if-"

"No," Bucky says, rushing the words, and now he just sounds desperate. God, he wishes he could talk to Sam normally for  _ once.  _ "Stay," he says, with more composure.

He looks at Sam, his eyes asking him,  _ what about you? What keeps you awake at this hour? _

Sam sits silently, slowly shifting his gaze from Bucky to the city. He watches as Sam struggles to find words, and this feels like an olive branch. Share your wounds and I'll share mine.

"Haven't managed to get a full night's sleep since the- uh-" - Bucky doesn't try to complete his sentences, he waits for him to figure out what he wants to say " - the nightmare," Sam finally says. "About Riley," he completes.

"Hm," Bucky replies. He's never been much for words, but lately it's been especially hard to find anything to say.

"Yeah," Sam says, "it's just- it's been complicated. I don't know what triggered it. But now everytime I close my eyes it's like I can see him right in front of me, and he's falling, falling, falling," he gestures with his hands, "and I can't do anything." 

Sam shuts himself up, probably afraid of just having over-shared. 

A car does a sharp turn somewhere near them, and the sound fills up the silence as Bucky weighs what to say. Sam's made an effort to get them talking, so it's his turn.

"I- ", Bucky opens his mouth, but he doesn't know where to start, doesn't know how to say this in an organized way, so he decides to just be honest, "I dream about the screams. That's the- the one thing that I just- " he shakes his head, "I just can't deal with it. The pleading for mercy. And I wish I could stop, but I can't, and I just keep doing it-"

He can taste salt on his lips.  _ Oh _ . Tears. That's unusual. He's crying. He looks over at Sam, whose face is twisted in a mix of horror and concern. And Bucky's sure that Sam's heard worse, there's much worse nightmares to have, he's had worse, these are just the ones that seem to never stop haunting him, but it's been a while since someone looked at him with so much genuine  _ empathy _ , and somehow that's a whole different kind of gut wrenching. 

He was used to being looked at as a monster in Russia, and then Steve just looked at him as if he was a charity case, something that he had to fix (and yes, he does realize the irony in the situation, because that's exactly how he used to look at Steve when they were younger, and they'd had numerous fights about it). 

Shuri, bless her, was the closest to looking at him as a human being, but he was still just a lab experiment to her, no matter how much she cared. But here was Sam, talking to him as an actual person, and sharing his pain with him. 

He feels a hand on his shoulder, and oh, he's sobbing. That one - he couldn't remember the last time he actually cried, and now here he was, sitting on the floor, next to Sam, with Sam's arm wrapped around his shoulders, his hand rubbing him as if trying to keep him warm. This was not the peaceful, people-watching night he had envisioned. 

Sam spends the rest of the night telling him about Riley, how they met, what he was like. Sometimes he'd talk about him as if he was still alive, and the way Sam described him made Bucky almost believe that he was. Sam never got around to talking about Riley's death, and Bucky didn't ask.

The night gets progressively colder, and when the sun rises, all shy yellows and then vibrant pinks, Bucky suggests getting coffee, and realizes they're leaning against each other.

iv.

"Sam."

He feels like he's six years old again, standing next to his parent's bed to tell them he had had a bad dream.

Sam sits up immediately, which probably means he wasn't even asleep, and asks him what's wrong. Bucky's going to have to have a talk with him one of these days, because while Bucky can afford to not sleep (he's had plenty of it, enough for a lifetime, and if he never had to sleep ever again he'd be a happy man), Sam  _ needs _ to sleep. But that'll occur to him later, not now. Now, he's got incoherent thoughts running through his head, and he's trying to hold himself together, and his mind feels overrun with pictures of people yelling.

"You've got to tie me up," Bucky says, and Sam raises his eyebrows. Bucky realizes that's probably not what he was expecting to hear, but he doesn't know how else to say it. 

"You've got to tie me up," he repeats, and he sounds frantic. He looks around the room, notices the light coming in - Sam sleeps with his blinds slightly open too, he remarks to himself, or maybe they just don't work - , but doesn't see anything of use in the room. "I don't want to hurt anyone," he mumbles.

"What?"

"I don't want to hurt anyone. I feel like I'm going to hurt someone. You've got to restrain me, Sam, please," Bucky says, grabbing his arms, almost shaking Sam, and his panic grows by the second.

"Bucky," Sam says, but Bucky's still looking around the room, because there must be _ something _ that he can  _ use _ \- "James."

That gets his attention. It's been a minute since anyone said that name, he only ever hears it prefaced by 'Sargeant' , and followed by 'Buchanan Barnes'. But the strategy works.

"Listen to me," Sam says, and it's his turn to grab Bucky, "You're not going to hurt anyone."

"I-" and sure, the way Sam says it makes it sound crazy, but, "It looked so real. It looked so real Sam. What if I wake up and realize it's not a dream?"

Sam shakes his head, but Bucky isn't done. "What if it's you? What if I hurt  _ you _ , Sam?"

Visions of blood fill his head, blood on his hands, blood on the floor, blood on the sheets, blood on Sam's face. 

Sam shakes him. "James, listen to me," and there's that word again, there's that name, his name. Why does it feel so foreign? "Listen to me. You're not going to hurt anyone. You're not going to hurt me."

"You can't be sure, Sam-"

"No, I can. You know why? Because I've been living with you for months now and you haven't hurt anyone. And you haven't hurt  _ me _ You're not a time bomb,  _ James _ ," - something about the way Sam says it makes the word feel grounding, "it was just a nightmare."

Bucky doesn't reply. He wishes he could, he wishes he knew what to say, ask him how he manages to read his mind ( _ "You're not a time bomb, James" _ ), how he can trust Bucky so easily, how he knows what to say (the word " _ James _ " echoes through his mind, and Bucky will later toss around in bed trying to understand why the way Sam says it makes it sound holy).

"Plus," Sam says, when there's less tension in the room. "I could totally take you in a fight."

He gives him that cocky smile that Bucky is used to seeing, and it makes Bucky actually burst out into laughter. Credit where credit is due, attempting to make someone laugh in a moment like this is a risky trick, but Sam makes it work.

"It's true!" Sam says, and he's trying so hard to look serious it's comical, "you just don't want to do it because you know you'll come out of it with your ego bruised."

"Sure, sure," Bucky says, sitting down on Sam's bed, "you keep telling yourself that."

He knows that Sam is just trying to distract him from his thoughts, but he gives in anyway. He'll take Sam's nonsense over his hyper realistic dreams of guts spilled onto the floor any day of the week. 

And he appreciates that Sam is trying, at least.

"I will, and I do," Sam continues, "every night I go to sleep and I whisper to myself 'you can totally take him in a fight'".

Buck almost snorts. "You should write a self help book."

"It'd be a bestseller, immediately. I'd put my handsome face on the cover, and everyone would just  _ have _ to buy it."

"No one said you were handsome," Bucky smiles, but Sam always has an answer on the tip of his tongue.

" _ I _ did, and mine is the only opinion that matters."

"Is that what you're going to write in your self help book? Sounds like a true page turner."

"You're just jealous you're not a best-selling author like  _ moi _ ."

Bucky's not sure when they fell asleep, all he knows is that he woke up with his face on the end of the bed, his arms splayed over Sam's legs.

v.

"Hey." 

Sam is standing at his door. 

This is the most comfortable bed Bucky's laid on in a while, albeit his standards are low, and he was almost asleep when Sam knocked on his door. 

"Sorry," Sam says, when he notices Bucky fighting off sleep just so he can focus his eyes on Sam. "This is stupid."

"You've already woken me up," Bucky replies, and Sam retracts, but that's not what Bucky meant. He'll learn to speak eventually, he chastises himself. "What's up?"

"No, I'm sorry," Sam says, "I just thought you might be awake."

"Well, I am," Bucky says, and forces a smile so that it comes out friendly this time. "What's up?"

"Ah- Hm. I was just. Thinking. But this is - yeah, sorry, no, this is personal, and I shouldn't ask."

Bucky wants to reply already, he can guess what's coming, he doesn't mind replying  _ yeah, I'm gay,  _ although it's a weird time to ask. He's been trying to open that conversation up lately, though, because he's actually trying to  _ share  _ and? Open himself up a bit? Sam said sharing was healing, even if what you’re saying doesn't feel too significant. 

He's not sure  _ when _ Sam had said that, but sometimes he went on a tangent, as if dinner was his support group and Bucky was the only attendee. 

He  _ did _ listen to Sam, by the way, he was just bad at showing it.

"Ask away."

Sam tiptoes around it, more apologies, and finally comes to, "Did it hurt you that Steve just  _ left _ ?"

Ah. Not the question Bucky was expecting.

But Sam knows the answer, doesn't he? It's an obvious yes, written on his face everytime someone mentions Steve, the way Bucky almost flinches when Sam says that name, like someone just touched on an open wound. Unless his answer to that question isn't what Sam is looking for. 

"Because it hurt  _ me _ ," Sam says, and he pauses, "sorry, it's hard to talk about it," his voice sounds strangled. 

He's not sure why Sam is talking about it now, but he shifts on the bed anyway, motioning for Sam to sit on it, and Sam does. 

He eyes Sam up and down discreetly as he waits for Sam to gather his thoughts. He smells like soap, Bucky notices. He's not sure why he never noticed what Sam smelled like before. Maybe they had never been this close, not intentionally, at least. 

They still kept their whole "I hate you" thing during the day, which Bucky enjoyed, but the dialogue between them had become softer, and he was starting to get good at reading Sam.

"He didn't even ask us. I guess that's what bothers me the most," Sam says. "I mean, rationally, I know that we shouldn't have anything to do with his decision, but-"

"It still hurts," Bucky agrees. 

"It still hurts," Sam repeats. "He came back and it felt like I was watching Riley fall once more. Except this time he  _ chose _ to do it, and that just makes it so much worse."

And Bucky feels the impulse to tell him about him and Steve. How he was Steve's firsts but Steve wasn't his. How his family took Steve in. How he knew he was never meant for Steve, no matter how much he wanted to be, and no matter how Steve would insist on it. How, when Steve told him about Peggy, it felt like a weight was lifted off his shoulders and a piece of his heart was taken at the same time, because it meant Steve had found his someone, and that someone wasn't him. And the fact that he'd always known didn't make it easier.

So he tells Sam. And he cries through it, though he still fights the tears because he fucking hates crying, and the more he talks the more it seems to pour out of him. 

Bucky hadn't been allowing himself to think about Steve, to think about this pain, because it was just more pain added on top of his trauma, and he wasn't sure how much more energy he had to deal with this. 

But now it was all coming out of him and he couldn't stop himself. Sam turns on the bedside lamp, light languidly lighting the room in warm colors. Once, he gets up to grab tissues for Bucky, and another time he goes to bring him a glass of water.

When Bucky's done talking, having lost track of time, Sam is half asleep on the bed, and Bucky doesn't try to get him to leave, and Sam doesn't try to leave.

That night, he doesn't have dreams.

vi.

It becomes a weird habit of theirs. At first it's sporadic, when one of them really can't sleep. He'll wake up the other and talk until he gets tired.

Sometimes it's because they worked until too late and they both passed out on the sofa, or the floor, or the nearest bed. 

And soon they're a bit too comfortable sleeping next to each other, and when management can only get them one bed for whatever reason, they don't complain.

Initially, their conversations mostly concerned trauma. Sam would make Bucky talk and put his thoughts into words, and Bucky comforted Sam about his guilt. They talked about Steve a lot.

But as they processed more and more about their pasts, the conversations started shifting towards the present, the mundane. Bucky talks about his love for coffee, or how he finds it incredible that he can actually have sensitivity in his prosthetic arm, or whatever new thing from history he's learned about. 

Sam talks about the books he's reading, tells Bucky that when they retire he might just go back to college and study psychology. He talks about the food they've been eating, gets distracted doing mental shopping lists. He talks about music, and Bucky had more than once fallen asleep listening to Sam singing, sometimes with his head on Sam's lap as Sam played with his hair - a position that had happened by mistake but that neither of them complained about.

Sam talked about the places they were in, and Bucky helped him with languages, until his brain started shutting down to sleep and he defaulted back to russian. 

It felt easy, the two of them. One day Bucky woke up with a blanket over him, and on a particularly cold night, with Sam sound asleep, he decided to lift him and tuck him in bed next to him, and Sam never mentioned it.

Eventually, when they got tired of mostly sleeping on the floor, since neither of them wanted to go back to his bed alone, they just told management to stop giving them places with two beds unless it was necessary, and no one said anything, and neither did they.

vii.

They have a couple of hours to kill, waiting for management to arrange a flight so they can go pursue a lead somewhere. 

They decide to wait it out on the rooftop of a building, drinking some cheap, already cold coffee from a shop they'd stopped by, and Sam is telling Bucky about some recipe his grandma used to make. 

Bucky mindlessly follows the motion of Sam's hands as Sam gestures to explain the recipe. He's listening to Sam, but mostly as background noise, because he's come to enjoy Sam's voice. He could listen to him speak for hours, and Sam  _ can _ speak for hours, so it's a good match.

It hits Bucky, as he inhales the afternoon air, the faint smell of fancy soap surrounding him, watching as the shades of orange and purple change the way Sam's face looks, that he would like to kiss Sam.

And sure, maybe it was inevitable, maybe it was predictable that this would eventually happen, but it feels organic. He wants to kiss Sam, and it's not out of desperation, or some deep hidden romantic love, or whatever else he's felt before. He just wants to feel closer to Sam, embrace him, and something in his body is telling him to do it.

"Sam," he says, when the conversation comes to a natural stop.

"James," Sam replies. He's taken to calling him James wherever they're alone, and it's the most pleasant sound Bucky hears every day. 

This time, the words come easy. "May I kiss you?"

Sam ponders, but then smiles and says, "I'd love that."

And before Bucky can make a move, Sam's right hand is cupping his cheek, and then Bucky feels soft lips on him, and it's as safe and encompassing and warm as he wanted it to be. He can feel Sam smile through his kiss, and Bucky kisses him deeper, because he wants to share in the happiness. 

He grabs Sam by the waist and pulls him closer. And for once in a long, long time, James feels like himself, and he feels safe, and believes that maybe, maybe, they'll both be okay one day; because they're okay now, and isn't that a wonderful sign?

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> can't wait to be queerbaited by fatws.  
> it's been a minute (tm) since ive written fic, and i havent written these two in a long time, so any kind of comments is appreciated. thanks for reading :)


End file.
